2nd Meditation for Advent 2003 (Part 1)

On Mother Teresa’s “Dark Nights”

DECEMBER 15, 2003 00:00ZENIT STAFFSPIRITUALITY AND PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 15, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Here is Part 1 of the second
Advent meditation that Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa delivered at
the Vatican last Friday, in the presence of the Pope and members of the
Roman Curia.

***

Father Raniero Cantalamessa

Advent 2003 at the Papal Household
Second Homily

“Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow …”

One day, Francis of Assisi exclaimed: “Emperor Charles, Orlando and Oliver,
all the paladins and brave warriors who were courageous in combats,
pursuing the infidels to the death with much sweat and toil, gained a glorious
and memorable victory over them, and in the end these holy martyrs fell in
battle for the faith of Christ. But now there are many, who only by narrating
their feats, want to receive honor and glory from men.”[1]

In one of his Admonitions, the saint explained what he wished to say with
those words: “It is a great shame for us, servants of the Lord, that the saints
acted with deeds and we, recounting and preaching the things that they did,
want to receive honor and glory.”[2] These words come to my mind as an
austere sign at the moment I set about to give the second meditation on the
holiness of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

1. In the darkness of the night

What happened after Mother Teresa said her “yes” to the divine inspiration
that was calling her to leave everything to place herself at the service of the
poorest of the poor? The world knew well all that happened around her — the
arrival of her first companions, the ecclesiastical approval, the vertiginous
development of her charitable activities — but until her death, no one knew
what happened within her.

It has been revealed by her personal diaries and her letters to her Spiritual
Director, made public on the occasion of the process of beatification: “With the
start of her new life at the service of the poor, an oppressive darkness came
upon her.”[3] A few brief passages suffice to give an idea of the density of the
darkness in which she found herself:

“There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so

deep that it is painful, a suffering continual — yet not wanted by God,
repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal …. Heaven means nothing to me, it
looks like an empty Place”[4]

It was not difficult to recognize immediately in this experience of Mother

Teresa a classic case of that which scholars of mysticism, following St. John
of the Cross, usually call the dark night of the spirit. Tauler gives an
impressive description of this stage of the spiritual life:

“Now we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any knowledge
of God and we fall into such anguish so as not to know any more if we were
ever on the right path, nor do we know if God does or does not exist, or if we
are alive or dead. So that a very strange sorrow comes over us which makes
us think that the whole world in its expanse oppresses us. We no longer have
any experience or knowledge of God, and even all the rest seems repugnant
to us, so that it seems that we are prisoners between two walls.”[5]

Everything leads one to think that this darkness was with Mother Teresa until
her death,[6] with a brief parenthesis in 1958, during which she was able to
write jubilantly: “Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an
unbroken union of love.”[7] If from a certain moment she no longer speaks
about it, it is not because the night was finished, but rather because she got
used to living with it. Not only did she accept it, but she recognizes the
extraordinary grace it held for her.

“I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very
small part, of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.”[8]

The most perfumed flower of Mother Teresa’s night is her silence about it.
She was afraid, in speaking about it, of attracting attention to herself. Even the
people who were closest to her did not suspect anything, until the end, of this
interior torment of Mother. By her order, the spiritual director had to destroy all
her letters and if some have been saved it is because he, with her permission,
had made a copy for the Archbishop and future Cardinal T. Picachy, which
were found after his death. Fortunately for us, the archbishop refused to
acquiesce to the request made also to him by Mother to destroy them.

The most insidious danger for the soul in the dark night of the spirit is to
realize that it is, precisely, the dark night, of that which great mystics have
lived before her and therefore to be part of a circle of chosen souls. With the
grace of God, Mother Teresa avoided this risk, hiding her torment from all
under a constant smile.

“The whole time smiling — Sisters and people pass such remarks — they
think my faith, trust and love are filling my very being. … Could they but know
— and how my cheerfulness is the cloak by which I cover the emptiness and
misery.”[9]

A known desert Father says: “No matter how great your sufferings are, your
victory over them is in silence.”[10] Mother Teresa put this into practice in a
heroic manner.

2. Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

On the occasion of the canonization of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina some lay

observers expressed the thought that the sanctity of the mystic Padre Pio
seemed archaic, as opposed to Mother Teresa’s, the saint of charity, which
would be a modern holiness. Now we discover that Mother Teresa was also a
mystic (that Padre Pio was also a saint of charity is sufficiently demonstrated
by the work he realized for the “relief of suffering”)!

The error is to contrast these two lines of Christian holiness which, on the
contrary, we often see wonderfully united, that is, in highest contemplation
and most intense action. St. Catherine of Genoa, considered one of the
summits of mysticism, was proclaimed by Pius XII patroness of hospitals in
Italy, because of her work and that of her disciples in favor of the sick and
incurable, which reminds us very much of that of Mother Teresa in our days.

In a beautiful article, written on the occasion of the beatification, an Indian

author described Mother Teresa as “a sister for Gandhi.”[11] Undoubtedly
many traits join the two great souls, the two Mahatmas of modern India, but it
is even more correct, I believe, to see in Mother Teresa “a sister for Padre
Pio.” They are joined not only by the same veneration of the Church, but also
a same cyclone of glory on the part of world public opinion. One distinguished
herself in corporal works of mercy, the other in spiritual works of mercy. But it
was proper to Mother Teresa to remind the world of today that the worst
poverty is not the poverty of things but the poverty of God, of humanity and of
love; in a word, the poverty of sin.

The trait that brings these two saints closest is perhaps precisely the long dark
night in which they lived their whole life. I will always remember the
impression I had when reading, in the choir of San Giovanni Rotondo, the
account displayed in a frame, in which Padre Pio described the fact of the
stigmata to his spiritual father. He ended by making his own the words of the
Psalm which says: “Lord, punish me no more in your anger; in your wrath do
not chastise me!” (Psalm 38:2). He was convinced, and this conviction
accompanied him throughout his life, that stigmata were not a sign of
predilection or acceptance on the part of God but, on the contrary, of his
refusal and just divine punishment for his sins. It was what opened my eyes to
the mystical stature of this my brother, in whom until then, I was not much
interested.

To spread light, both these souls had to go through life in darkness,

convinced, in addition, of “deceiving” people. St. Gregory the Great says that
the mark of superior men is that “in the pain of their own tribulation, they do
not neglect their usefulness to others; and while they endure with patience the
adversities that strike them, they think of teaching others that which is
necessary, similar in this to certain great doctors who, stricken themselves,
forget their wounds to cure others.”[12] This sign shines out in an eminent
degree in the life of Mother Teresa and of Padre Pio.

3. Not only purification

But why this strange phenomenon of a night of the spirit that lasts practically
the whole of life? Here there is something new in regard to that which
teachers of the past have lived and explained, including St. John of the Cross.
This dark night is not explained only with the traditional idea of passive
purification, the so-called purgative way, which prepares for the illuminative
and the unitive way. Mother Teresa was convinced that it was precisely this in
her case; she thought that her “I” was especially hard to overcome, if God was
so constrained to keep her such a long time in that state.
But this was not true. The interminable night of some modern saints is the
means of protection invented by God for today’s saints who live and work
constantly under the spotlight of the media. It is the asbestos suit for the one
who must walk amid the flames; it is the insulating material that impedes the
escape of the electric current, causing short circuits …

St. Paul said: “And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of
revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh” ([see] 2 Corinthians 12:7). The
thorn in the flesh that was God’s silence was revealed most effective for
Mother Teresa: It preserved her from any intoxication, amid all the world’s talk
about her, even at the moment of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. “The
interior pain that I feel,” she said, “is so great that I don’t feel anything from all
the publicity and people’s talking.”

This also joins Mother Teresa to Padre Pio. One day Padre Pio, looking out
from the window on the crowd gathered in the square, asked in wonder from
the brother who was next to him: “But why have all these come here?” and to
the reply: “For you, Father,” he left in haste sighing: “If they only knew …”

But there is an even more profound reason that explains why these nights are
prolonged for a whole lifetime: the imitation of Christ, participation in the dark
night of the spirit that Jesus had in Gethsemane and in which he died on
Calvary, crying: My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?” In the
apostolic letter “Novo Millennio Ineunte,” precisely in regard to the “suffering
face” of Christ, the Pope writes:

“Faced with this mystery, we are greatly helped not only by theological
investigation but also by that great heritage which is the ‘lived theology’ of the
saints. The saints offer us precious insights which enable us to understand
more easily the intuition of faith, thanks to the special enlightenment which
some of them have received from the Holy Spirit, or even through their
personal experience of those terrible states of trial which the mystical tradition
describes as the ‘dark night.’ Not infrequently the saints have undergone
something akin to Jesus’ experience on the Cross in the paradoxical blending
of bliss and pain.”[13]

The letter mentions the experience of St. Catherine of Siena and of Teresa of
the Child Jesus; now we know that the example of Mother Teresa could also
be mentioned. She was able to see her trial ever more clearly as an answer to
her desire to share the “Sitio” of Jesus on the cross:
“If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation give you a drop of
consolation, my own Jesus, do with me as you wish. … Imprint on my soul
and life the suffering of your heart …. I want to satiate your thirst with every
single drop of blood that you can find in me. … Please do not take the trouble
to return soon. I am ready to wait
for you for all eternity.”[14]

It would be a serious error to think that the life of these persons was all gloom
and suffering. “Novo Millennio Ineunte,” we heard, speaks of a “paradoxical
blending of bliss and pain.” Deep down in their souls, these persons enjoy a
peace and joy unknown by the rest of men, deriving from the certainty,
stronger than doubt, of being in the will of God. St. Catherine of Genoa
compares the suffering of souls in this state to that of purgatory and says that
the latter “is so great, that it is only comparable to that of hell,” but that there is
in them a “very great contentment” that can only be compared to that of the
saints in Paradise.[15]

The joy and serenity that emanated from Mother Teresa’s face was not a
mask, but the reflection of profound union with God in which her soul lived. It
was she who deceived herself about her story, not the people.

[Tuesday: By the side of the atheists]

***

[1] “Leggenda Perugina,” 72 (Fonti Francescane, No. 1626)

[2] “Ammonizioni,” VI (FF, No. 155).

[3] Father Joseph Neuner, S.J., “On Mother Teresa’s Charism,” Review for
Religious, September-October 2001, vol. 60, No. 5 [following abbreviation: JN]
(The documents quoted in this homily were graciously put at my disposition by
the General Postulation of the Cause of Mother Teresa.)

[4] “There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so
deep that it is painful, a suffering continual — yet not wanted by God,
repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal. … Heaven means nothing to me, it
looks like an empty Place” (JN)

[5] “Giovanni Taulero, Omelia” 40 (ed. G. Hofmann, Johannes Tauler,

Predigten, Friburgo in Br. 1961, p. 305).
[6] Cf. Father A. Huart, S.J., “Mother Teresa: Joy in the Night,” Review for
Religious, September-October 2001, vol. 60, No. 5 [following abbreviation:
AH].

[7] “Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an unbroken union of
love” (JN).

[8] “I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very
small part, of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth” (JN).

[9] “The whole time smiling — Sisters and people pass such remarks — they
think my faith, trust, and love are filling my very being. … Could they but know
— and how my cheerfulness is the cloak by which I cover the emptiness and
misery” (AH).

[10] “Apophtegmata Patrum,” Poemen 37 (PG 65, 332).

[11] G. Varangalakudy, “A sister for Gandhi,” The Tablet, 11 October 2003, p.

12.

[12] St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, I,3,40 (PL 75, 619).

[13] NMI, 27

[14] “If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation give you a drop of
consolation, my own Jesus, do with me as you wish. … Imprint on my soul
and life the suffering of your heart. … I want to satiate your thirst with every
single drop of blood that you can find in me. … Please do not take the trouble
to return soon. I am ready to wait for you for all eternity” (JN).

[15] Cf. St. Catherine of Genoa, “Trattato del Purgatorio,” 4 (ed. Cassiano
Carpaneto da Langasco, “Sommersa nella fontana dell’amore. Santa Caterina
Fieschi Adorno,” vol. 2, “Le opere,” p. 96; cf. also vol. 1. “La vita,” pp. 49 s.

[Translation by ZENIT]

2d Meditation for Advent 2003 (Part 2)

On Mother Teresa’s “Dark Nights”
DECEMBER 16, 2003 00:00ZENIT STAFFSPIRITUALITY AND PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 16, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Here is Part 2 of the second
Advent meditation that Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa delivered at
the Vatican last Friday, in the presence of the Pope and members of the
Roman Curia.

Part 1 appeared Monday.

***

Father Raniero Cantalamessa

Advent 2003 at the Papal Household
Second Homily

“Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow …”

4. By the Side of the Atheists

Rather than “archaic” saints, the mystics are the most modern among the
saints. The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in
good faith, those who live painfully the situation of the silence of God, who do
not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the
existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything; they too, in their
own way, live in the dark night of the spirit. Albert Camus called them “the
saints without God.” The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel
and table companions. Like Jesus, they “sat down at the table of sinners and
ate with them” (see Luke 15:2).

This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pour over
the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the
writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of
Foligno; T.S. Eliot on those of Julian of Norwich. There they find again the
same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. This year
is the 50th anniversary of the first representation of “Waiting for Godot,” the
most representative drama of the theater of the absurd, but few know that its
author, Samuel Beckett, in his free time read St. John of the Cross.

The word “atheist” can have an active and a passive meaning. It can indicate
someone who rejects God, but also one who — at least so it seems to him —
is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy atheism (when it is not
in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow, or of expiation. In the latter
sense we can say that the mystics, in the night of the spirit, are the “a-tei,”
those without God. Mother Teresa has words that no one would have
suspected of her:

“They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God. … In
my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not
being God, of God not really existing. Jesus please forgive the
blasphemy.”[16]

But one is aware of the different nature, of solidarity and of expiation, of this
“atheism” of hers:

“I wish to live in this world which is so far from God, which has turned so much
from the light of Jesus, to help them — to take upon myself something of their
suffering.”[17]

The mystics arrived within a step of the world of those who live without God;
they have experienced the dizziness of throwing themselves down. Again,
Mother Teresa who writes to her spiritual father:

“I have been on the verge of saying — No. … I feel as if something will break
in me one day. … Pray for me that I may not refuse God in this hour — I don’t
want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it.”[18]

Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the postmodern
world, where one lives “etsi Deus non daretur,” as if God did not exist. They
remind the honest atheists that they are not “far from the kingdom of God”;
that it would be enough for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the
mystics, passing from nothingness to the All. Karl Rahner was right to say:
“Christianity of the future, will either be mystical or it will not be at all.” Padre
Pio and Mother Teresa are the answer to this sign of the times. We should not
“waste” the saints, reducing them to distributors of graces or of good
examples.

4. Our Little Night

The mystics have, however, something to say also to us believers, not only to
the atheists. They are not an exception, or a category apart from Christians.
Rather they show in an amplified way, what the full expansion of the life of
grace should be. One thing above all we learn from the dark night of the
mystics and, in particular, of Mother Teresa: how to behave in the time of
dryness, when prayer becomes a struggle, effort, a beating of the head
against a “wailing wall.”

There is no need to insist on Mother Teresa’s prayer in all those years passed
in darkness; the image of her in prayer is the one we all still have before our
eyes. A series of very beautiful prayers are among the most precious legacy
that she has left to her daughters and to the Church. Of Jesus, the evangelist
Luke says that “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly,” “factus in
agonia prolixius orabat” (Luke 22:44). It is what is also observed in the life of
these souls.

Dryness in prayer, when it is not the result of dissipation and of compromises

with the flesh, but permitted by God, is the attenuated and common form that
the dark night takes in the majority of people who tend to holiness. In this
situation, it is important not to give up and begin to omit prayer to give oneself
to work, seeing that very little is achieved by being at prayer. When God is not
there, it is important at least that his place remain empty and that it not be
taken by some idol, especially the one called activism.

To avoid that happening, it is good to interrupt one’s work every now and then
to raise at least a thought to God, or to simply sacrifice a bit of time to him. In
the time of dryness it is necessary to discover a special type of prayer that
Blessed Angela of Foligno defined as forced prayer and that she said she
herself practiced:

“It is a good thing and very pleasing to God that you pray with the fervor of
divine grace, that you watch and make efforts to carry out every good action;
but it is more pleasing and acceptable to the Lord if, receiving less grace, you
do not reduce your prayer, your vigils, your good works. Act without grace, as
you acted when you had grace. … You doyour part, my son, and God will do
his. Forced, violent prayer is very acceptable to God.”[19]

This is a prayer that can be made with the body and with the mind. It is a
secret alliance between the will and the body and it is necessary to use it to
reduce the mind … to reason. Even when our will cannot command the mind
to have or not have certain thoughts, it can command the body: the knees to
kneel, the hands to be joined together, the lips to open and pronounce some
words; for example: “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit.”
An Eastern mystic, Isaac the Syrian, said: “When the heart is dead and we no
longer have the least prayer nor any supplication, may he come and find us
prostrated with our faces to the ground perpetually.” Mother Teresa also knew
this “forced” prayer:

“The other day I can’t tell you how bad I felt — there was a moment when I
nearly refused to accept — deliberately I took the Rosary and very slowly
without even meditating or thinking — I said it slowly and calmly.”[20]

The simple staying with the body in church, or in the chosen place of prayer,
the simple being in prayer, is now the only way that remains to continue to be
persevering in prayer. God knows that we can go to do a hundred more useful
things which will gratify us more, but we stay there, we consume to the end
the time given to him in our schedule, or by our resolution.

To a disciple who continually lamented not being able to pray because of

distractions, an elderly monk, to whom he turned, replied: “Let your thinking
go where it will, but let not your body leave the cell!”[21] It is advice that is
valid also for us, when we find ourselves in situations of chronic distractions
that are no longer within our power to be able to control: Let our thinking go
where it wills, but let our body remain in prayer!

In time of dryness we must remember the very sweet word of the Apostle: “the
Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26 ff.). He, without our being
aware, fills our words and sighs with the desire of God, of humility, of love.
Then the Paraclete becomes the strength of our “weak” prayer, the light of our
extinguished prayer; in a word, the soul of our prayer. Truly, as the Sequence
says, he “waters that which is arid,” “rigat quod est aridum.”

All this comes through faith. Suffice it for me to say: “Father, you have given
me the Spirit of Jesus; forming, therefore, ‘only one Spirit’ with him, I recite
this Psalm, I celebrate this holy Mass, or I am simply in silence, here in your
presence. I wish to give you that glory that Jesus would give you, if he was to
pray again from earth.” With this certainty we conclude our reflection praying:

“Holy Spirit, you who intercede in the hearts of believers with inexpressible
sighs, knock at the hearts of so many of our contemporaries who live without
God and without hope in this world. Enlighten the minds of those who at this
moment are delineating the future physiognomy of our continent; make them
understand that Christ is not a threat for any one, but a brother of all. That to
the poor, the little, the persecuted and the excluded of the Europe of tomorrow
not be removed, with culpable silence, the guarantee that until now has most
defended them from the arbitrariness of the great and from the harshness of
life: the name of the first of them, Jesus of Nazareth!”

***

[16] “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God. …
In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God
not being God, of God not really existing. Jesus, please forgive the
blasphemy,” cf. Father Joseph Neuner, S.J., “On Mother Teresa’s Charism,”
Review for Religious, September-October 2001, vol. 60, No. 5 [following
abbreviation: JN].

[17] “I wish to live in this world which is so far from God, which has turned so
much from the light of Jesus, to help them — to take upon myself something
of their suffering” (JN).

[18] “I have been on the verge of saying — No … I feel as if something will

break in me one day.” “Pray for me that I may not refuse God in this hour — I
don’t want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it,” cf. Father A. Huart, S.J.,
“Mother Teresa: Joy in the Night,” Review for Religious, September-October
2001, vol. 60, No. 5 [following abbreviation: AH].

[19] “Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno,” ed. Quaracchi, Grottaferrata,
1985, p. 576 s.

[20] “The other day I can’t tell you how bad I felt — there was a moment when
I nearly refused to accept — deliberately I took the Rosary and very slowly
without even meditating or thinking — I said it slowly and calmly” (AH).

[21] “Apophtegmi dei Padri,” from the Coislin manuscript 126, No. 205 (ed. F.
Nau, in Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 13, 1908, p. 279).

[Translation by ZENIT]

3rd Meditation for Advent 2003 (Part 1)

Love for Jesus Drove Mother Teresa
DECEMBER 22, 2003 00:00ZENIT STAFFSPIRITUALITY AND PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 22, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Here is Part 1 of the third Advent
meditation that the Papal Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, delivered last Friday in the presence of the Pope and
members of the Roman Curia. Part 2 appears Tuesday.

***

Father Raniero Cantalamessa

Advent 2003 at the Pontifical Household
Third Homily

“Do You Know the Living Christ?”

1. Jesus, Sense of Mother Teresa’s Life

Mother Teresa’s confessor, Jesuit Father Celeste Van Exem, has said of her:
“The meaning of her whole life was a person: Jesus.”[1] After studying her life
for years, and the writings and testimonies of others about her, the general
postulator of her cause of beatification concludes: “If I have to say, in
synthesis, why she is raised to the honor of the altar, I reply: because of her
personal love of Jesus which she lived in such an intense way as to consider
herself his bride. Hers was a Jesus-centered life.”[2]

The most significant testimony in this respect is the letter that Mother Teresa
wrote to all the family of the Missionaries of Charity from Varanasi, during
Holy Week, on March 25, 1993.[3] “Such a personal letter,” she said at the
beginning, “that I wished to write it by hand.” In it, she says:

“I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus — one to one — you and
Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel — but have you seen with the
eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living
Jesus — not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you
heard the loving words He speaks to you? … Never give up this every day
intimate contact with Jesus as a real living persons — not just an idea.”[4]

Here one sees how for Mother Teresa Jesus was not an abstraction, a
collection of doctrines, of dogmas, or the memory of a person who lived at
another time, but a living Jesus, someone to look at in his own heart and to
allow oneself to be looked at.
Mother explained that if until then she had not spoken so openly it was out of
a sense of reserve and to imitate Mary who “kept all things in her heart,” but
that she now felt the need, before leaving them, to tell them what for her was
the meaning of her whole work: “For me it is clear: everything in the
Missionaries of Christ exists only to satiate (the thirst) of Jesus.”[5]

To the question: “Who is Jesus for me?” she replies with an inspired litany of
titles.

“Jesus
Is the word to be spoken.
He is the Life to be lived.
He is the Love to be loved.
He is the Joy to be shared …
He is the Sacrifice to be offered.
He is the Peace to be given.
He is the Bread of life to be eaten …”[6]

Love for Jesus assumes spontaneously the form of spousal love. She herself
recounts: “Because I talk so much of giving with a smile, once a professor
from the United States asked me, ‘Are you married?’ And I said, ‘Yes, and I
find it sometimes very difficult to smile at my spouse, Jesus, because he can
be very demanding.'”[7]

The majority of trees with tall trunks have a main root that descends
perpendicularly in the earth and is like the continuation, under the earth, of the
trunk. In Italian it is called the “fittone” (vertical root). It is the one that gives
some trees, such as the oak, that unshakableness that not even the most
impetuous winds succeed in uprooting. Man also has this vertical root. In
general, for one who lives according to the flesh it is his own “I,” disordered
self-love, egoism; in the spiritual man it is Christ. The whole path to holiness
consists in changing the name and nature of that root, until one can say with
the Apostle, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians
2:20). Thanks also to the long purification of her dark night, Mother Teresa
brought to completion this process to which all of us are committed.

2. The Fruit of Love Is Service

One of Mother Teresa’s best-known sayings is: “The fruit of Love is Service
and the fruit of Service is Peace.”[8] The two things — love for Jesus and
service of the poorest of the poor — were born together, as a torrent of lava,
in the soul of Mother Teresa, at the moment of her second call on September
10, 1946. She said to her daughters:

“I Thirst and You Did it to Me: Remember always to connect the two, the
means with the Aim. What God has joined together let no one split apart. …
Our Charism is to satiate the thirst of Jesus for love and souls — by working
at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the poor.”[9]

“You — did — it — to — me”: Mother Teresa pronounced these words

distinctly on the fingers of one hand and said it was “the Gospel of the five
fingers.” For Mother Teresa, Jesus who is present in the Eucharist, is present
in a different way but equally real, “in the distressing disguise of the poor.” The
litany in honor of Jesus recalled above continues to say without pause:

“Jesus is the Hungry to be fed.

He is the Thirsty to be satiated.
He is the Naked to be clothed.
He is the Homeless to be taken in.
He is the Sick to be healed.
He is the Lonely to be loved.”[10]

We all know to what level she was driven in her service of the poorest of the
poor. At a meeting, a religious remarked to her that she spoiled the poor and
offended their dignity, giving them everything for free, without asking them for
anything. She replied: “There are so many congregations that spoil the rich
that it is not bad that there is one that spoils the poor.”[11] According to
Mother Teresa, the head of the Social Services of Calcutta understood better
than any one else, the spirit of her service to the poor. One day he said to her:
“Mother, you and we do the same social work but there is a difference: We are
doing it for something, you are doing it for Someone.”[12]

There have been those who have seen in this a limitation, not an appreciation
of Christian love for one’s neighbor. Does to love one’s neighbor “for
Someone,” namely for Jesus, not instrumentalize one’s neighbor, reduce him
to a means in view of a different end which, taken to the limit, can be that
egotistical one of earning merits for paradise?

This is true in every other case, but not in that of Jesus, because it is contrary
to the dignity of the human person to be subordinated to another creature, but
not to be subordinated to the Creator himself, to God. In Christianity there is
an even a stronger reason. Christ identified himself with the poor. The poor
and Christ are one and the same: “You did it to me.” To love the poor for the
love of Christ does not mean to love him “through a third party,” but to love in
person. This is the mystery that was impressed in the life of Mother Teresa
and of which she prophetically reminded the Church.

The love of Jesus drove Mother Teresa, as it did other saints before her, to do
things that no other motive in the world — political, economic, humanitarian —
would have been able to make her do. Once, someone watching what Mother
Teresa was doing with a poor man exclaimed: “I wouldn’t do it for all the gold
in the world!” Mother Teresa answered: “Neither would I!” Which meant: for all
the gold in the world no, but for Jesus yes.

Mother Teresa was able to give to the poor not only bread, clothes and
medicine, but that of which they have greater need: love, human warmth,
dignity. It shocked her to recall the episode of a man found half-eaten by
maggots in a rubbish dump who, after being taken home and looked after,
said: “Sister, I have lived like an animal on the street, but I am going to die like
an angel, loved and cared for,”[13] and he died shortly after saying with a big
smile: “Sister, I am going to God’s house.” Mother Teresa with an abandoned
child in her arms, or bending over someone dying is, I believe, the very icon of
the tenderness of God.

3. “I Am Among You as One Who Serves”

And now the compelling question: What does this aspect of Mother Teresa’s
life say to us? She has reminded us that true greatness among men is not
measured by the power exercised but by the service rendered: “Whoever
would be great among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26).

No one is dispensed from being committed in some way in service of the poor,
but the service can assume different forms, as the needs of man are many
and diverse. Paul speaks of a “service of the Spirit,” “diakonia Pneumatos” (2
Corinthians 3:8) of which the ministers of the new covenant are in charge.
Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of the “service of the word” proper to
the Apostles, more important for them than the service of the table (Acts 6:4).
The exercise of authority and the ecclesiastical magisterium also form part of
this service. “I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus said to the Apostles
(Luke 22:27) and in what did this service consist if not in instructing, correcting
and preparing them for the future mission?
What Mother Teresa reminds everyone is that every Christian service, to be
genuine, must be motivated by the love of Jesus. “For what we preach,” the
Apostle said to the Corinthians, “is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord,
with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). It is also
possible for someone who works in the Curia to put into practice that which
Mother Teresa called “the Gospel of the five fingers”: “You did it for me.” To
do everything for Jesus, to see Jesus in those one has been called to serve,
even perhaps with a bureaucratic practice.

But in this circumstance the Papal Household Preacher feels the need to
abandon the parenthetical tone of “what should one do,” to assume, instead,
the joyful tone of thanksgiving for that which already is. I cannot let this
occasion pass without joining my very small voice to that of the whole Church.
It is 25 years now that, under our very own eyes, a man is consumed in the
“service of the Spirit.” In John Paul II the title “Servus servorum Dei,” Servant
of the servants of God, introduced by St. Gregory the Great, has not been one
among others, but the recapitulation of a life.

This service, as Mother Teresa’s, has also had its source in the love of Jesus.
How many times the Holy Father has repeated the phrase of the Gospel that
presents the pastoral service of Peter as an expression of love of Christ:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me? Tend my sheep” (cf. John 21:15 ff.).
Sign that this word has been the inspirational motive of his pontificate, and
that which still drives him to spend himself for the Church. Mother Teresa
often said that “love to be true has to hurt”[14] and in truth it cannot be said
that suffering has been absent all these years from the life of the Successor of
Peter …

Nor has a tenderness been absent that recalls that of Mother Teresa. Many of
us were moved the other evening when we attended the first showing of the
documentary entitled “John Paul II, Witness of the Invisible,” in Montecitorio
palace. Among the most telling scenes are those where the Pope hugs and
kisses children or the sick. It made me think of the words of God in Hosea: “I
took them up in my arms” (Hosea 11:4).

[Your] Holiness, in the New Testament there is a passage that seems written
for you to pronounce to the whole Church and I take the liberty to read it, more
for us than for you. The Letter to the Romans speaks of a “consolation that
comes from Scripture” which helps to “maintain our hope alive” (Romans
15:4): I believe that the only thing that justifies my having held this office for 24
years is to transmit some of this consolation that comes from Scripture. The
passage in question is Paul’s farewell speech to the Church of Ephesus:

“You yourselves know how I lived among you …

Serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials …
How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable,
teaching you [and] testifying …
But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I
may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord
Jesus, to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God …
I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Take heed to
yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you
guardians, to feed the Church of the Lord which he obtained with his own
blood …
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to
build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are
sanctified” (Acts 20:18-32).

That day, Paul made a mistake in only one point and this calms us: He said
that they would not see his face again, and this made all those present weep.
But it was a fear, not a prophecy. From the pastoral letters we know that he
saw the Church of Ephesus again two years later, at the end of his first
Roman imprisonment (cf. 1 Timothy 1:3).

If I have done wrong in taking the liberty to speak this way, Holy Father,
reprove Mother Teresa because it is she who suggested that I do so with the
love that this new Catherine of Siena had for the Successor of Peter.

[Tuesday: A Jesus-Centered Spirituality]

***

[1] In L’Osservatore Romano, Special, Oct. 19, 2003, p. 19.

[2] Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, ibid., p. 12.

[3] While awaiting its publication, the document was kindly made available to
me by the postulation of Mother Teresa’s cause (henceforth abbreviated:
Varanasi).

[4] ” I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus — one to one — you
and Jesus alone. We may spend time in chapel — but have you seen with
eyes of your soul how He looks at you with love? Do you really know the living
Jesus — not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you
heard the loving words He speaks to you? … Never give up this every day
intimate contact with Jesus as real living person — not just one idea.”

[5] “For me it is so clear — everything in Missionaries of Charity exists only to

satiate Jesus” (Varanasi, cit.).

[6] “Jesus is the Word — to be spoken. Jesus is the Life — to be lived. Jesus
is the Love — to be loved. Jesus is the Joy — to be shared. Jesus is the
Sacrifice — to be offered. Jesus is the Peace — to be given. Jesus is the
Bread of life — to be eaten”: in “A Fruitful Branch on the Vine, Jesus.” First
book of Mother Teresa of Calcutta edited by Missionaries of Charity, St.
Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2000 (collection of authentic
prayers and sayings of Mother; henceforth abbreviated: “A Fruitful Branch”).

[7] “Because I talk so much of giving with a smile, once a professor from the
United States asked me, ‘Are you married?’ And I said, ‘Yes, and I find it
sometimes very difficult to smile at my spouse, Jesus, because He can be
very demanding — sometimes'”: from Mother Teresa’s address at the National
Prayer Dinner, Washington, D.C., Feb. 3, 1994, by kindness of the postulation
of the cause (henceforth abbreviated: Washington).

[8] “The fruit of Love is Service. The fruit of Service is Peace”: in “A Fruitful
Branch,” cit . p. 36.

[9] “‘I Thirst’ and ‘You did it to Me’ — Remember always to connect the two,
the means with the Aim. What God has joined together let no one split apart.
… Our Charism is to satiate the thirst of Jesus for love and souls — by
working at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the poor’ ”
(Varanasi, cit.).

[10] “Jesus is the Hungry — to be fed. Jesus is the Thirsty — to be satiated.

Jesus is the Naked — to be clothed. Jesus is the Homeless — to be taken in.
Jesus is the Sick — to be healed. Jesus is the Lonely — to be loved”: “A
Fruitful Branch,” cit. p. 36f.

[11] Mother Teresa’s commentary on the topic “Charity, Soul of the Mission,”
Letter to Cardinal Tomko, Jan. 23, 1991, by kindness of the postulation of the
cause (henceforth abbreviated: Commentary).
[12] “Mother, you and we are doing the same social work but there is one
difference. We are doing it for something, and you are doing it for SOMEONE
” (Commentary, cit.)

[13] “Sister, I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die as
an angel, loved and cared for” (Washington, cit.).

[14] “Love to be true has to hurt”: “A Fruitful Branch,” cit. p. 26.

[Translation by ZENIT]

3rd Meditation for Advent 2003 (Part 2)

Mother Teresa’s Jesus-Centered Spirituality
DECEMBER 23, 2003 00:00ZENIT STAFFSPIRITUALITY AND PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 23, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Here is Part 2 of the third Advent
meditation that the Papal Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, delivered last Friday in the presence of the Pope and
members of the Roman Curia. Part 1 appeared Monday.

***

Father Raniero Cantalamessa

Advent 2003 at the Pontifical Household
Third Homily

“Do You Know the Living Christ?”

4. The Love of Christ of which It Is Impossible to Think of Any Greater

Now, however, a Christmas ending. Mother Teresa has reminded us today

about the secret source of her service to the poor and of the whole of her life:
the love of Jesus. And this is also the secret to celebrate a true Christmas. In
the Christmas carol “Adeste Fideles” there is a verse that says: “Sic nos
amantem quis non redamaret?” How can one not return the love of one who
has loved so much?” A loving heart is the only crib Jesus loves to come to at
Christmas.

But where can this love be found? Mother Teresa knew of whom she should
request it: of Mary! One of her prayers says:

“Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so

immaculate, so full of Love and Humility, that I may receive Jesus as You did
— and go in haste to give Him to others.”[15]

But on this point, we must be even bolder than Mother Teresa. I will explain
myself. Mother Teresa has a wonderful spirituality; I have tried to bring to light
to a degree. But her spirituality, as well as that of Padre Pio, is marked by the
time in which both of them were formed. What was missing in theological
reflection — not in life! — was a clear Trinitarian perspective which now, after
the Council, for example in the [apostolic letter] “Novo Millennio Ineunte,”
appears as the source and form of all Christian holiness. As the postulator of
her cause recalled, hers is a spirituality that is more “Jesus-centered” rather
than Trinitarian.

Mother Teresa has different and beautiful prayers to the Virgin, but none — at
least in the writings known to date — to the Holy Spirit. The latter is mentioned
only rarely and almost by accident, in instances of traditional liturgical
formulas. There is no doubt that her holiness, as that of all the saints, is from
top to bottom the work of the Holy Spirit. [Referring] to the wisdom of the
saints, St. Bonaventure says: “no one receives Him unless He is desired, and
no one desires Him unless one is profoundly inflamed by the Holy Spirit.”[16]
It is only that this role of the Holy Spirit was not sufficiently brought to light in
spiritual and theological formation.

Fortunately, it is not wide theological vision that makes the saints but the
heroism of charity. Moreover, no saint possesses on his own all the charisms
and exhausts all the potential enclosed in the divine model that is Christ.
Fullness is found in the ensemble of the saints, that is, in the Church, not in
the individual. The members of a religious institute should be so wise as to
preserve intact the heritage transmitted by the founder, remaining open, at the
same time, to receive the new lights and graces that the Spirit does not cease
to lavish on the Church.

One is perplexed by those movements and communities in which everything

— every word of God, every spiritual intuition and initiative — must pass
rigidly through the person in charge or the founder and from him be
transmitted to the bases. It is as if people refused to have their own original
relation with God, within the common charism, and become simple repeaters.

Beginning from a Trinitarian perspective, what do we discover that is new

about the love of Jesus? An extraordinary thing: that a perfect, infinite love for
Jesus exists, the only one worthy of him, a love “of which it is not possible to
think of one greater,” and we discover that there is for us the possibility of
being part of it, of making it our own, of receiving Jesus with it at Christmas. It
is the love with which the heavenly Father loves his Son, in the very act of
generating him.

We received such love in baptism, because the love with which the Father
loves the Son from eternity is called the Holy Spirit and we received the Holy
Spirit. What do we think is that “love of God that was poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit” (cf. Romans 5:5) if it is not, literally, the love of God,
that is, the eternal love, uncreated, with which the Father loves the Son and
from whom every other love proceeds?

Last time I said that the mystics are not a category of Christians who are
apart; they do not exist to amaze us, but to show all, in a magnified way, what
the full development of the life of grace is. And the mystics have taught us,
precisely, this: that, by grace, we are inserted in the vortex of the Trinitarian
life. God, says St. John of the Cross, communicates to the soul “the same
love that he communicates to the Son, even if this does not happen by nature,
but by union. … The soul participates in God, accomplishing, together with
him, the work of the Most Holy Trinity.”[17]

It is Jesus himself who assures us of this in clear words: “so that the love with
which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them,” he says addressing
the Father (John 17:26). In us, then, by grace is the same love with which the
Father loves the Son. What a discovery, what horizons for our prayer and our
contemplation! Christianity is grace and grace is nothing other than this:
participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), namely, in divine love, love
being the very “nature” of which the God of the Bible is made.

Some mystics, like Eckhart, spoke of a special, mysterious Christmas, which

takes place in the “depth of the soul,” celebrated when the human creature, by
his faith and humility, allows God the Father to generate again in him his own
Son.[18] A recurring maxim in the Fathers — from Origen to St. Augustine and
St. Bernard — says: “What benefit is it for me that Christ was born once in
Bethlehem, if he is not born again by faith in my soul?”[19] The custom of
celebrating three Masses on Christmas day has been explained traditionally
thus: the first commemorates the eternal birth from the Father, the second the
historical birth from Mary, the third the mystical birth in the soul.

The German mystic Angelus Silesius expresses this idea in two verses: “Even
if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem / If he is not born in thee
you are lost for eternity.”[20] These verses were meditated upon at Christmas
of 1955 by the well-known Italian convert Giovanni Papini; he wondered how
this interior birth could occur and the answer he gave himself — and which
can also serve us — was the following:

“This new miracle is not impossible as long as it is desired and anticipated.

The day in which you will not feel a pang of bitterness and jealousy before the
joy of an enemy or friend, rejoice because it is a sign that that birth is close. …
The day in which you will feel the need to bring some happiness to one who is
sad and the impulse to alleviate the pain and misery of even only one
creature, be happy because God’s arrival is imminent. And if one day your are
stricken and persecuted by misfortune and you lose your health and strength,
children and friends, and you must endure the indifference, the malice and the
coldness of those near and far, but, despite everything you do not abandon
yourself to lamentations and cursing and accept your destiny with a serene
spirit; exult and triumph because the portent that seemed impossible has
happened and the Savior is already born in your heart.”[21]

All of these are “signs” of the birth that has occurred, but the cause, which
produces it, is the one mentioned at the beginning: desire and expectation: a
faith full of expectation, certain of itself, expectant faith, according to the
expression dear to English-speaking Christians. Mary also conceived Christ
like this in her heart, by faith, before she did so physically in her flesh: “prius
concepit mente quam corpore.”[22]

It is not a question of having particular “sentiments” (who can “feel” such a

thing?); it is enough to believe and, at the moment of receiving the Body and
Blood of Christ on Christmas Eve, to say with simplicity: “Jesus, I receive you
as Mary your Mother received you; I love you with the love with which the
heavenly Father loves you, that is, with the Holy Spirit.”[23]

With these sentiments I wish you, Most Blessed Father, and you, Venerable
Fathers, and you, brothers and sisters, Happy Christmas!
***

[15] “Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so

immaculate, so full of Love and Humility, that I may receive Jesus as You did
— and go in haste to give Him to others”: in “A Fruitful Branch on the Vine,
Jesus,” p. 44. It is the first book of Mother Teresa of Calcutta edited by
Missionaries of Charity, St. Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2000.

[16] St. Bonaventure, “Itinerarium mentis in Deum,” 7,4.

[17] St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle A, strophe 38.

[18] Cf. Master Eckhart, “Il Natale dell’anima,” ed. G. Faggin, Vicenza 1984.

[19] Cf. Origen, Commentary on Luke’s Gospel 22,3 (SCh 87, p. 302).

[20] Angelo Silesius, “The Cherubic Pilgrim,” I, 61: “Wird Christus tausendmal
zu Bethlehem geborn / und nicht in dir: du bleibst noch ewiglich verlorn.”

[21] Cit. da A. Comastri, “Dov’è il tuo Dio? Storie di conversioni del XX

secolo,” San Paolo 2003, p. 52.

[22] Cf. St. Augustine, Discourses 215,4 (PL 38, 1074).

[23] Cf. that which St. Francis wrote, “Admonitions” I (FF, 142): “The Spirit of
the Lord, which dwells in his faithful, is him who receives the most sacred
Body and Blood of the Lord.”

Mother Teresa’s Dark Night Unique, Says

Preacher
AUGUST 27, 2007 00:00ZENIT STAFFVATICAN DICASTERIES/DIPLOMACY

VATICAN CITY, AUG. 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Blessed Mother Teresa of

Calcutta’s dark night of the soul kept her from being a victim of the media age
and exalting herself, says the preacher of the Pontifical Household.
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said this in an interview with Vatican
Radio, commenting on previously unpublished letters from Mother Teresa,
now made public in Doubleday’s book “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,”
edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator of the cause of Mother
Teresa’s canonization.

In one of her letters, Mother Teresa wrote: “There is so much contradiction in

my soul. Such deep longing for God — so deep that it is painful — a suffering
continual — and yet not wanted by God — repulsed — empty — no faith —
no love — no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means nothing — to me
it looks like an empty place.”

Father Cantalamessa explained that the fact that Mother Teresa suffered
deeply from her feeling of the absence of God affirms that it was a positive
phenomenon. Atheists, he contended, are not afflicted by God’s absence but,
“for Mother Teresa, this was the most terrible test that she could have
experienced.”

He further clarified that “it is the presence-absence of God: God is present but
one does not experience his presence.”

Martyrdom

Father Cantalamessa contended that Mother Teresa’s spiritual suffering

makes her even greater.

He said: “The fact that Mother Teresa was able to remain for hours in front of
the Blessed Sacrament, as many eye-witnesses have testified, as if
enraptured … if one thinks about the condition she was in at that moment, that
is martyrdom!

“Because of this, for me, the figure of Mother Teresa is even greater; it does
not diminish her.”

The Capuchin priest further lauded Mother Teresa’s ability to keep her
spiritual pain hidden within her. “Maybe, this was done in expiation for the
widespread atheism in today’s world,” he said, adding that she lived her
experience of the absence of God “in a positive way — with faith, with God.”

Not scandalous
Father Cantalamessa affirmed that Mother Teresa’s dark night should not
scandalize or surprise anyone. The “dark night,” he said, “is something well-
known in the Christian tradition; maybe new and unheard of in the way Mother
Teresa experienced it.”

He added: “While ‘the dark night of the spirit’ of St. John of the Cross is a
generally preparatory period for that definitive one called ‘unitive,’ for Mother
Teresa it seems that it was one stable state, from a certain point in her life,
when she began this great work of charity, until the end.

“In my view, the fact of this prolongation of the ‘night’ has meaning for us
today. I believe that Mother Teresa is the saint of the media age, because this
‘night of the spirit’ protected her from being a victim of the media, namely from
exalting herself.

“In fact, she used to say that when she received great awards and praise from
the media, she did not feel anything because of this interior emptiness.”

The Atheism of Mother Teresa

 FATHER RANIERO CANTALAMESSA

She became poor to serve the materially poor did she similarly share the sufferings of the spiritually
poor?

What happened after Mother Teresa said her Yes to the divine inspiration that was calling her to place
herself at the service of the poorest of the poor?

The world knew well all that happened around her the whirlwind development of her charitable
activities but until her death, no one knew what happened within her.

That is now revealed by her personal diaries and her letters to her spiritual director, published by
Doubleday, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of her death, under the title: Mother Theresa. Come,
Be My Light.

Some have completely misunderstood the nature of these writings, thinking that they oblige us to
reconsider the personality of Mother Theresa and her faith and holiness. Far from undermining the
stature of Mother Theresas holiness, these new documents will immensely magnify it, placing her at the
side of the greatest mystics of Christianity.

Jesuit Father Joseph Neuner, who knew her, has written, With the beginning of her new life in the
service of the poor, darkness came on her with oppressive power.

A few brief passages suffice to give an idea of the density of the darkness in which she found herself:
There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so deep that it is painful, a
suffering continual yet not wanted by God, repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal. ... Heaven means
nothing to me, it looks like an empty place.

Jesuit Father Joseph Neuner, who knew her, has written, With the beginning of her new life in the service
of the poor, darkness came on her with oppressive power.

It was not difficult to recognize immediately in this experience of Mother Teresa a classic case of that
which scholars of mysticism, following St. John of the Cross, usually call the dark night of the soul. Tauler
gives an impressive description of this stage of the spiritual life:

Now, we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any knowledge of God and we fall into
such anguish so as not to know any more if we were ever on the right path, nor do we know if God does
or does not exist, or if we are alive or dead. So that a very strange sorrow comes over us that makes us
think that the whole world in its expanse oppresses us. We no longer have any experience or knowledge
of God, and even all the rest seems repugnant to us, so that it seems that we are prisoners between two
walls.

Everything leads one to think that this darkness was with Mother Teresa until her death, with a brief
parenthesis in 1958, during which she was able to write jubilantly:

Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an unbroken union of love.

If, from a certain moment, she no longer speaks about it, it is not because the night was finished, but
rather because she got used to living with it. Not only did she accept it, but she recognized the
extraordinary grace it held for her.

I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very small part, of Jesus darkness
and pain on earth.

The Silence of Mother Theresa

I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very small part, of Jesus darkness
and pain on earth.

The most perfumed flower of Mother Teresas night is her silence about it.

She was afraid, in speaking about it, of attracting attention to herself. Even the people who were closest
to her did not suspect anything, until the end, of this interior torment of Mother.

By her order, the spiritual director had to destroy all her letters and if some have been saved it is
because he, with her permission, had made a copy for the archbishop and future Cardinal T. Picachy,
which were found after his death. Fortunately for us, the archbishop refused to acquiesce to the request
made also to him by Mother to destroy them.

The most insidious danger for the soul in the dark night of the spirit is to realize that it is, precisely, the
dark night, of that which great mystics have lived before her and therefore to be part of a circle of
chosen souls.

With the grace of God, Mother Teresa avoided this risk, hiding her torment from all under a constant
smile.
The whole time smiling sisters and people pass such remarks they think my faith, trust and love are
filling my very being. ... Could they but know and how my cheerfulness is the cloak by which I cover the
emptiness and misery, she wrote.

A Desert Father says: No matter how great your sufferings are, your victory over them is in silence.

Mother Teresa put this into practice in a heroic manner.

Not Just Purification

But why this strange phenomenon of a night of the spirit that lasts practically the whole of life? (The
same happened to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina: he was convinced throughout his life, that stigmata were not
a sign of predilection or acceptance on the part of God but, on the contrary, of his refusal and just divine
punishment for his sins!)

A Desert Father says: No matter how great your sufferings are, your victory over them is in silence.

Here there is something new in regard to that which teachers of the past have lived and explained,
including St. John of the Cross. This dark night is not explained only with the traditional idea of passive
purification, the so-called purgative way, which prepares for the illuminative and the unitive way.

Mother Teresa was convinced that it was precisely this in her case; she thought that her I was especially
hard to overcome, if God was so constrained to keep her such a long time in that state.

But this was not true.

The interminable night of some modern saints is the means of protection invented by God for todays
saints who live and work constantly under the spotlight of the media. It is the asbestos suit for the one
who must walk amid the flames; it is the insulating material that impedes the escape of the electric
current, causing short circuits.

St. Paul said: And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given
me in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7).

The thorn in the flesh that was Gods silence preserved Mother Teresa from any intoxication, amid all the
worlds talk about her, even at the moment of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

The interior pain that I feel, she said, is so great that I dont feel anything from all the publicity and
peoples talking.

How wrong author and atheist Christopher Hitchens is when he writes God is not great. Religion poisons
everything, and presents Mother Theresa as a product of the media-era.

But there is an even more profound reason that explains why these nights are prolonged for a whole
lifetime: the imitation of Christ.

This mystical experience is a participation in the dark night of the spirit that Jesus had in Gethsemane
and in which he died on Calvary, crying: My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?

Mother Teresa was able to see her trial ever more clearly as an answer to her desire to share
the sitio (thirst) of Jesus on the cross: If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation give you a
drop of consolation, my own Jesus, do with me as you wish. ... Imprint on my soul and life the suffering
of your heart. ... I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me. ...
Please do not take the trouble to return soon. I am ready to wait for you for all eternity.

It would be a serious error to think that the life of these persons was all gloom and suffering.

Deep down in their souls, these persons enjoy a peace and joy unknown by the rest of men, deriving
from the certainty, stronger than doubt, of being in the will of God. St. Catherine of Genoa compares the
suffering of souls in this state to that of purgatory and says that the latter is so great, that it is only
comparable to that of hell, but that there is in them a very great contentment that can only be
compared to that of the saints in paradise.

The joy and serenity that emanated from Mother Teresas face was not a mask, but the reflection of
profound union with God in which her soul lived. It was she who deceived herself about her spiritual
status, not the people.

By the Side of the Atheists

The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully
the situation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they
experience the existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way,
live in the dark night of the spirit.

Albert Camus called them the saints without God. The mystics exist above all for them; they are their
travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them (see
Luke 15:2).

This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the
mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over
the writings of Angela of Foligno; T.S. Eliot on those of Julian of Norwich.

There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. Few
know that Samuel Beckett, the author of Waiting for Godot, the most representative drama of the
theater of the absurd, in his free time read St. John of the Cross.

The word atheist can have an active and a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God,
but also one who at least so it seems to him is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy
atheism (when it is not in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow or of expiation.

In the latter sense, we can say that the mystics, in the night of the spirit, are a-theist, that Jesus himself
on the cross was an a-theist, without-God.

They remind the honest atheists that they are not far from the Kingdom of God; that it would be enough
for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All.

Mother Teresa has words that no one would have suspected of her: They say people in hell suffer
eternal pain because of the loss of God. ... In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not
wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. Jesus please forgive the blasphemy.

But one is aware of the different nature, of solidarity and of expiation, of this atheism of hers:
I wish to live in this world that is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to
help them to take upon myself something of their suffering.

The clearest sign that this is an atheism of a completely different nature is the unbearable suffering that
it causes to the mystics. Normal atheists dont torment themselves because of the absence of God.

The mystics arrived within a step of the world of those who live without God; they have experienced the
dizziness of throwing themselves down. Again, Mother Teresa who writes to her spiritual father: I have
been on the verge of saying No. ... I feel as if something will break in me one day. ... Pray for me that I
may not refuse God in this hour I dont want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it.

Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the post-modern world, where one lives etsi
Deus non daretur (as if God did not exist).

They remind the honest atheists that they are not far from the Kingdom of God; that it would be enough
for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All.

Karl Rahner was right to say: Christianity of the future, will either be mystical or it will not be at all.
Padre Pio and Mother Teresa are the answer to this sign of the times.

We should not waste the saints, reducing them to distributors of graces or of good examples.